The interesting thing is that in the observation above the signal is not visible but if you check the waveform of the audio is visible like in the next image (left is QARMAN, right is Phoenix):
With one frame visible in the waterfalls itâs difficult to say for sure which TLE fits, however you can have an idea, so for Phoenix these are the possible objects:
Thanks for posting that here, @fredy. Scott got in touch with us via email, and mentioned that he obtained this signal while tracking object 45260. However, he hasnât seen anything since, and neither have we. The packet that he sent us did not look like any telemetry that the satellite would normally transmit out, so we arenât sure what this means for our spacecraft.
Good Afternoon. We are working CryoCube mission operations and looking for solution on satellite/TLE identification. I have read the forum and it appears that some of the NORAD satellite identifications could be incorrect. Trying to collect input from each mission team to sort out the NORAD TLE confusion. Any inputs from team would be great!
Iâm not sure what process was followed by spacetrack in their identification but it seems that we have one more misidentification of at least two satellites for sure.
The current status is that all the objects are still close to each other, so choosing following one you will receive something. Let me recap here what we have until now:
AZTECHSAT-1 is one of:
OBJECT RD(45260)(less possible)
OBJECT RE(45261)(still selected to follow in Network)
OBJECT RF(45262)
QARMAN is one of:
OBJECT QZ(45256)(less possible)
OBJECT RC(45259)
OBJECT RG(45263)(still selected to follow in Network)
Phoenix is one of:
OBJECT RA(45357)
OBJECT RB(45258) (selected in Network)
OBJECT RD(45260) (less possible)
OBJECT RE(45261) (less possible)
OBJECT RF(45262) (less possible)
Phoenix is not consistently transmit, but from time to time giving us some hints about its TLE, RadSat-U was probably received once some hours after deployment, so itâs difficult to say which object is. The rest of the satellites havenât been received until now, so it is impossible to identify them.
Is CryoCube received? Does it transmit any beacon that would be easily tracked?
Please keep us updated if your team has any hint on the identification process. Thanks!
Unfortunately we have not been able to contact CryoCube at this time. We have been tracking via our ground station at KSC using NORAD ID 45258. Only one primary S-Band communication system onboard and requires uplink interrogation to initiate downlink transmission for the current pass and then transitions back to receive only.
Uplink PCM/FM = 2082MHz at 4ksps
Downlink OQPSK = 2261MHz at 400ksps
We will definitely pass on any orbital information we can find.
Unfortunately due to the strong QARMAN signal and the background noise, the signal is no visible on the auto-adjusted waterfall, so itâs not possible to run ikhnos for TLE identification.
EDIT: I forgot to say that the frame was decoded by direwolf.
However there are two observations near on Phoenix frequency which is discussed here, if the signal with ~40s interval is Phoenix then it will fit better OBJECT RD(45260) or OBJECT RE(45261)
AZTECHSAT-1 is one of:
OBJECT RD(45260)
OBJECT RE(45261)(still selected to follow in Network)
Still both objects fit well enough the observed signals.
Thank you @fredy ! Maybe I missed something, but why do you exclude object RC for QARMAN? It gave the best results for us here at VKI ground station (but we have to repeat the tests this week).
All the above results are based on the observations of SatNOGS Network and on using ikhnos to analyze them. In short, ikhnos tries to project the expected curve of signals (red line) on a SatNOGS observation waterfall.
It does that based on the time of observation, station location and on the TLE that were used, thus you expect to see a straight red line for the used TLE. So, letâs see what we get for observation 1831423 (Iâll show only 4 of the 9 TLE sets as the rest are too off):
As you can see, OBJECT RB is totally off, OBJECT RC is off enough to say for sure that it is not QARMAN. Someone would say that QZ is also off enough, however as the calculations are lacking of some degree of accuracy and precision comparing to other tools, I give some slight possibility to QZ, but as you see I have chosen the RG OBJECT to be followed in Network as it seems to fit better than all the other TLE sets. Feel free to use ikhnos, it is actually a python script, and check other good observations of QARMAN or some from Phoenix as QARMAN is also visible there.
On why you get best results for RC object is probably because the objects are still close. You can see on the ikhnos results above that the expected curve for the signals using RC TLE set is very close to the observed one. To understand better how close they are check the screenshot from Gpredict bellow which shows all the deployed OJBECTS (+ ISS) over a station (light blue dot) in Australia. Notice how all OBJECTS are visible from the station at the same time at the polar plot:
From the QARMAN observation and the already identified objects from this deployment, we can say for sure that Phoenix is one of 45256-45259, as these were the only visible during the observation.
However from older observations we have managed to find that 45257 and 45258 are the most possible. From the Phoenix observations above it seems that 45258 is the right object, but as 45257 is still close, I would like to wait for a little longer in order to be 100% sure that it is this object.
The previous change on NORAD ID we follow has been changed back, so again we follow 45258 for Phoenix. My certainty currently for this ID is 90%-95%, so Iâll wait for the next reception or the vetting of receptions of the last week that may have a reception of Phoenix.
For all of those vetting Phoenix observations, please be careful as QARMAN is still visible on the waterfalls and maybe in some cases it is decoded too.
As you can easily see OBJECTS QZ and RA donât describe Phoenix transmission.
So, our candidates are OBJECTS RB and RC. In my previous post I have written that we had rejected OBJECT RC. However, letâs compare RB and RC OBJECTS, bellow are parts of observations 1751437 on 2020-02-25, 1778620 on 2020-03-01, 1891439 on 2020-03-21 and 1907470 on 2020-03-23 from top to bottom for each OBJECT.
As you can see on the above images, OBJECT RB red line was always crossed Phoenix signals in the middle, while OBJECT RC red line started from right side of Phoenix signals passing to the left-center part of it. The other fact is that the distance between the objects was decreasing during the last month, which means that the red lines of the wrong one would change and come closer to the red lines of the right one. As OBJECT RB wasnât changed means that we have identified Phoenix as OBJECT RB (45258).
RADSAT-U is identified and it is OBJECT RF (45262) QARMAN is identified and it is OBJECT RG(45263) Phoenix is identified and it is OBJECT RB(45258) AZTECHSAT-1 is identified and it is OBJECT RE(45261) Argus-02 - Unfortunately nothing heard from Argus-02 yet.
